Levi Strauss & Co. Commemorates World AIDS Day 2009 by Engaging Global Artists to Encourage Consumers to "Know Your Status"

Today Levi Strauss takes a comprehensive approach to HIV/AIDS that focuses on:

• A global Employee HIV/AIDS Program. Levi Strauss employees and their dependents are provided HIV/AIDS testing, treatment and care services in locations where benefits are not already covered by existing company health plans or adequately provided by public health care systems.
• Support for community organizations addressing HIV/AIDS with a focus on stigma and discrimination. In 1983, the Levi Strauss Foundation became the first U.S. corporate foundation to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Since then, the company and foundation have contributed more than $40 million in grants to HIV/AIDS service organizations in more than 40 countries with a focus eradicating the stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and those who are most vulnerable to infection. Today the foundation announced an additional $2 million in 2009, including $100,000 to Human Rights Watch.
• HIV/AIDS prevention education with our consumers. For more than a decade, Levi Strauss and Co. has also been commemorating World Aids Day by engaging employees and consumers. For the past several years, Levi Strauss South Africa has supported a campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness -- Red for Life -- targeting young people to take action to fight HIV/AIDS and promote testing among youth populations across the country. The efforts have raised significant funds for one of South Africa’s leading AIDS services and advocacy organizations.
• Engaged leadership in promoting effective global public policy. This year, Levi Strauss represented U.S. business as part of a U.S. delegation to the International Labor Conference to negotiate new ILO recommendations on addressing HIV/AIDS in the World of Work. Levi Strauss and the Levi Strauss Foundation also played significant roles in the International AIDS Conferences in Toronto in 2006 and Mexico City in 2008, presenting key results for addressing HIV/AIDS in the workplace, findings around insurance policy exclusions for the disease and supporting dialogue on human rights for people living with HIV/AIDS.